Stella credits McLaren's Hungary surge to upgrades as F1 2026 development race intensifies

Lando Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix by 15 seconds from pole position after McLaren introduced five significant upgrades to its MCL40, and team principal Andrea Stella says the development race will determine the 2026 Formula 1 championship from here to the final round.

The Hungaroring result marked McLaren’s third consecutive victory and underlined how dramatically the Woking outfit’s competitive position has shifted. The updated package — comprising a modified rear wing endplate, new floor and floor board, revised front and rear corner furniture, and an enlarged brake cooling outlet — transformed the car’s aerodynamic performance on the tight and twisty Budapest circuit. Oscar Piastri looked set to complete a McLaren one-two before retiring with a gearbox fault late in the race.

Mercedes had dominated the opening six rounds of the new regulation era, winning every race from pole, but has taken only two of the last five as Ferrari and McLaren have closed in. Ferrari drew attention earlier in the season when it arrived with a raft of upgrades that prompted Mercedes boss Toto Wolff to question how such development was possible under the cost cap; the Scuderia subsequently won in Barcelona and Silverstone.

Stella acknowledged that the scale of McLaren’s pace improvement in Hungary surprised even his own team. “The improvement from a competitiveness point of view can be entirely ascribed to the upgrades that we took here,” he said. “But at the same time, we were sort of thinking that this lap time step [would] not necessarily have been enough to be in pole position at the Hungaroring. Definitely we would not [have] thought that there would be enough to have such a strong pace in the race.”

Despite the result, Stella is not treating Hungary as a turning point so much as a prompt to accelerate further. “Honestly, I still believe that if we want to be in a position to fight for victories consistently in the future, we need to keep our focus on delivering more upgrades,” he said. “That is the plan, but we are not naive. We know that this will be the plan for all the teams. So I think like it’s always been in this 2026 season, it’s a matter of a race of upgrades. The good news is that McLaren is now back in this race.”

With 11 rounds of the most significant regulation overhaul in recent F1 history already completed, teams are still mapping the development potential of their cars. The season is scheduled to conclude at Abu Dhabi on 4-6 December, though the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has cast some uncertainty over that venue.